If ‘Feud’ Doesn’t Have You Dying to Watch ‘Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte,’ It Should

All this season on Feud, the back-biting antics, melodramatics, and high bitchery of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis have been the best advertisement for watching (or going back and re-watching) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The wars going on behind the scenes between Crawford and Davis led to one of the true camp classics. After so much time spent on Baby Jane, Feud turned its focus to the follow-up: Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte.

Once again, director Robert Aldrich was back with a story of disgraced madwomen with family issues that trend towards the murderous. And, as we all saw on last night’s Feud, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were all set to pair up again as rival cousins — this time with Bette as the victim and Crawford as the villain — but tensions on the set and a purported Crawford illness led to production delays and eventually Crawford being removed from the project in favor of Bette’s pal Olivia de Havilland.

Perhaps it’s because the drama on Charlotte was entirely behind the scenes — as opposed to Baby Jane, when audiences could have fun with the idea of watching real-life hatred play out on the screen in front of them — but it’s never managed to attain the notoriety or infamy of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Here’s hoping Feud helps to change that, because Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is an over-the-top, Southern Gothic delight.

The story concerns a spinster shut-in (Davis), a former Southern belle who fell to disgrace after a scandal with a married man led to his murder. Shunned from the town and suspected of the murder, Charlotte has been simmering in her own madness when her cousin Miriam (de Havilland) returns to help her keep the family home from being demolished. The relationship between the cousins is not as sweet as it seemed, though, and a series of murders brings events to a head.

In what might be the most surprising aspect of Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Bette Davis is not the most laudable performance of the movie. De Havilland plays a wonderfully slow-burning villain, matching Davis’s over-the-top displays of madness with a kind of killer coolness. And then there is the Oscar-nominated performance of Agnes Moorehead as Charlotte’s loyal housekeeper, the kind of massively over-the-top turn that speeds right through the boundaries of good taste and right into the realm of immortality. She’s a massive delight.

Perhaps the enduring legacy of Feud will be jump-starting a popular re-experiencing of Davis and Crawford’s movies. If so, Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte deserves to be at the top of the list.